Ultimately, I’m approaching it with a great deal of hesitation. Here is why:

When you start up a Video Game, much like watching a Movie, you will see some credits. In Modern Warfare 2, you’ll see Activision’s name, which is the Publisher, and Infinity Ward, which is the Game Development Studio. While the publisher can be involved in making (or ruining) a game, ultimately its up to the studio to produce a high quality game.

However, the Infinity Ward who made Modern Warfare 2 is not the same Infinity Ward who made Modern Warfare 3. Activision fired the lead game designer and a co-founder of Infinity Ward, and about half the staff resigned soon after that. They are now in a lawsuit against Activision who tried to withhold 60% of the staff’s bonuses.

As a Developer myself, there are two things I think are critical when working on a product, especially a video game: Design Direction and Talented Developers. From what I’ve read on the several news stories about staff leaving Infinity Ward, the majority were Leads and Seniors developers, animators, etc. So I would say the bulk of Infinity Ward’s talent left. Why does this matter?

Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were are great games. Each added on top of the other, trying new things and bringing noticeable improvements to each installment. Also, while Infinity Ward grew, many of the core team members were the same throughout the series. So you had a great team, with a lot of talent, and experience working together to make great games.

Meanwhile, other Call of Duty games by other studios like Treyarch, released games like Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops. While these games weren’t bad games, they weren’t ground breaking either. They felt like minor updates instead of fresh, new material.

So now we have an Infinity Ward with half of their staff brand new, and trying to release a game on a very tight deadline. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are technical issues at release, especially for the PC. From all the previews I’ve ready about Modern Warfare 3, it sounds like it really is just an updated version of MW2 with new maps and a new game play mode.

So while the videos and images of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 look impressive, and the marketing behind it is great, I’m not holding my breath. But this will be the first time I won’t be purchasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for PC, my personal choice for playing FPS games. I’ll likely pickup a copy of it for XBox 360 so I can play with friends, but here is my prediction:

Critics will give it high ratings (9+), actual players will give it okay ratings (7+), but Activision and Infinity Ward will have made their biggest mistake. They will have moved from being innovators to just producers. While they might sell millions of copies of this game, and they might pump out a few more titles, they open themselves to being displaced as the leader in the future. I’m hoping that future games will be able to bring in a breath of fresh air while Activision milks their franchise into the ground.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be proven wrong and Modern Warfare 3 will be great. I just have my doubts, especially when you have an exodus of senior talent from a company. I’ve seen that happen before, and rarely does the company produce the same quality as before.

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If EA wants to punish its consumers so heavily for posting on their forums what might be inappropriate or out of line, that’s fine, just ban their forum account. But if you ban their entire online gaming connections, that is going too far. This is my last straw with EA, and until I see significant changes in their attitude towards consumers, they will not receive a single penny from me. My money as a consumer is an award for good companies, and I don’t believe in awarding bad companies.

Update: it appears EA has retracted it’s statement to clarify that bans are handled individually, not globally. However, until I see better quality from EA, I’m not buying their games, period.

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‘We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn’t notice,’ claimed Riccitiello, ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’ The use of SecuROM in EA’s recent PC games, including Spore, Mass Effect and Crysis Warhead, has caused a lot of controversy on the Internet, resulting in hundreds of one-star reviews on Amazon.

99.8%? That is magical statistics at its best. I bought Spore, and I had an insanse time trying to get it to read the disc and install on my machine. SecuROM is extremely evasive, and when I re-format my machine, I have to go through the entire hassel again. To think that normal “gamers” don’t know mind these DRM tatics is total ignorance. I can’t backup my Spore DVD incase I lose it or it gets damanged. I’ve already written about my thoughts on DRM, but I can’t help re-emphasis my point:

DRM doesn’t stop illegal downloads. It harms legal users try to use their purchase legally. DRM will never, ever, be succcessfully until it makes the users life easier.

The one example of DRM I love is Steam. I buy a game once and it handles everything else for me. If I move computers, it works. If my computer blows up, it works. I can delete and re-download my game as many times as I want. It handles all updates for me. I can buy a game and play it within minutes, not needing to drive to the store. Even if I go to a friends and show him a game on HIS PC it works. Only one person can use it at a time, which for legal Steam owners is great. Steam has make my life easier so I accept it. I bought the game Crysis Warhead, and while the game’s quality was okay, I bought it on Steam and I had no problems with it.

Now, my other problem with EA is their quality of games. EA has turned into a video game assembly line. They pump out more games than any other company. But I will say their quality has also gone down the shaft. My personal latest example is with their game Tiger Woods 09. I managed to completely render my game on XBox 360 completely unplayable, all due to a clitch with the game, and took me several days to solve.

Somehow I managed to equip two gloves, right hand and left hand, on my character. I’m not sure how I did it, and I was playing when I realized “hey…. I have two gloves on?” I didn’t think much of it at the moment, saved and turned off my game, and waited several days before playing again. I went to turn on my game and it froze. I tried it several times, same behavior. After several hours of trial and error, I discovered the solution:

I had to first delete my game settings on my profile on the XBoX 360 hard drive. Then, I had to load the game and go the golfer manager. I then loaded my character, went to the “Pro Shop”, had to do an “item” search with several different combonations (which figuring it out crashed my xbox 7 or 8 times alone), and unquip the item. Finally I could save, restart my XBox, and play the game like normal.

Searching the internet for hours didn’t yeild any results. I tried to figure out how to contact EA for support, but gave up in the end after trying to create support acounts and jump through their hoops. Had it not been for me noticing my playered glitched, and understanding programming logic, I most likely would have never got my game to work again. What happened to Quality Assurance over at EA? I’m sure some poor gamer out there can’t play his game because he on accidently equiped a right-handed glove instead of a left.

I dunno, but I’m started to think I might just boycott EA all together.  Here are imagines of my dual wielding glove golfer, for proof that I really did go through all this mess:

Note: I took these on my iPhone quickly, so I know the quality isn’t that great.

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For Alliance in Stormwind Keep you can find them at (Stormwind City) [77,24]. I’ve included a picture of exactly where. Hopefully you won’t wander around aimlessly like I had to for ages.

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